Scaling
by dr. sluice
Summary: Anything to keep her a masterwork of muscle threads. Surrealish, UkitakeRukia.


**Fandom:** Bleach  
**Pairing:** Ukitake/Rukia  
**Rating:** T  
**Warning:** slight sensuality  
**Disclaimer:** I don't own Bleach.  
**Author's note:** This is my first Bleach fic. And this is a bit old.

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**Scaling**

When a person like Rukia sheds her many layers of skin, it's an intensely beautiful thing.

Sure, a million or so bacteria will creep and crawl and infect her. But that's the beauty of it, he tells her. Being this vulnerable is so honest and simple and sweet. If she doesn't like it, she can just grow a new skin. And repeat the process when the new one gets old.

A molting, of sorts.

Folding her shoulders, closing her eyes, breathing in stasis. She tries very hard and concentrates. Only he doesn't think this is an exercise that should take so much concentration. After a minute she takes a deep gasp and grows a new skin.

"I can't," she explains to him sadly. "It's already flaking."

He bears witness to her stepping from the new into the old, leaving it behind on his floor. She looks cozy and warm in her old skins, disturbingly so.

Seems they're the only ones tailored just right.

-

This old man takes some time to examine his own skins and finds a different set of cells each instance he checks. The discovery doesn't shock him very much. At all, he might say to a younger and brighter face.

When he goes through and examines _her_ skins, he finds flies buzzing and rotten smells. Plenty of things he's experienced before but not at this intensity. Not at this force.

She's living through carrion.

Leave your skins at the sink, he thinks to her softly, when she comes in. He's justly persuaded her to make herself nude to him again. Lay them on the sink and forget about them by mistake.

Only that would make a mistake into a miracle.

He is an advocate of the fresh and raw, more eager to plant a flower than to pluck it. "Think forward to spring," he says as he peels off her skins forcefully -- she struggles to maintain them but they only end up as a pile on the floor.

He can lie on his back and witness that fleshless wonder be eaten up by so much bacteria it's causing a whole-body infection. But he alone is the antiseptic; he can splash her any time he feels it fit. Anything to keep her a masterwork of muscle threads.

"Stay like that." He sighs through his nostrils, slouching against the headboard.

She looks up at him with that ever doubtful look. Her skin is already growing back: he hates it. "Can anyone? Is that even possible?"

"Maybe."

"Do you?"

He's wearing a skin that stretches out even when he breathes. "Very much so," he lies.

-

"You're being selfish," she informs him.

She's looking at the floor, inspecting her toes hovering above it. Her eyes are dark and shiny like the backs of beetles, like when she's scabbing over.

He doesn't know what to say to that. Partially because it's true, and partially because it's false. He runs his toes down her spine, in a lazy-loverly effort; it feels like a stegosaurus tail if he ever felt one, and he knows that even if she were a portrait of muscle tissue they'd still stick out.

Even when he's against the headboard, she quivers.

"Say something." She peers over her shoulder. "Admit it."

His eyelids dip. "I'm being selfish," he says after a moment.

She looks amused.

"Be selfish with me," he prods again. "Then that means I wouldn't have to be selfish anymore. It would be a mutual thing."

Rukia scoffs. "You'd only be saving yourself."

"Like I said, it would be mutual."

"No thanks, taichou," she says, slipping off the edge of the bed and stepping back into her old skins. She is smiling, just a little.

"Please, Rukia?" He wants to get an answer before he gets too riled up, and if he gets too riled up he'll start coughing. After all, he's still an old man.

Rukia runs her tongue over her lip and looks up at the ceiling. "I'm not like that. I don't think I'll ever be like that."

She can't handle the bacteria and the antiseptic is not enough. "I see."

"I'll try it, though."

A huge fissure, he muses. Maybe it's all the way down to her bones.

-

The next time they meet, Rukia tries very hard to please Ukitake. She cracks a few ribs, breaks a few limbs, tears off her skins so hard she bleeds, and ends up on her knees bawling. All he can say is he's impressed and happy that she can apply herself. But this is not what he wants. It shouldn't be so painful, he thinks.

"You're taking it too far."

She's surprised. "Really?"

He's sure she'll shrug out of her skins soon enough, though, so he's not too worried. "Let's try to find a happy medium," he chuckles.

That happy medium is just his hands scouring her trapezius, her obliques on his biceps, her satorius stretching in each leg, her sternocleido-mastoid under his tongue. His portrait of beauty carefully memorized from a poster hanging in a hallway of the fourth division headquarters.

He is terrible. A carnivorous, flesh-eating monster.

She's come this far. They'll make it.

-

Somehow, when she gives up, he's not surprised. Of course, he acts the part and does feel somewhat gloomy. But he's always had a solid seed of doubt that said she couldn't do it. No matter how much they did progress.

Her old skins keep her warm, even if what her problem is happens to be living in her bones. It's not just skin deep. Any way, she's happy. Just not being exposed like he wants her to be.

He misses having someone under the sheets with him. But it's the only way to go.

(In the end, he is no doctor. He can't dress anatomy up as philosophy.)

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Please leave a review and tell me what you think.


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